Convenor: Tim Bale, University of Sussex

This initiative was set up by SEI deliberately to catalyse research by specialists from all over Europe, east and west, and to give both the chance to interact and to meet with those who might be expected to help diffuse the results of that interaction. Its express purpose is to institutionalise a community able to define a research agenda and kick-start projects relating to it, both as analysts and as practitioners.

The seminar series is intended to encourage cross-national, pan-European research on a part of the political spectrum - the centre right - that has been relatively, and surprisingly, ignored. Despite their crucial importance to the postwar history and future prospects of the continent, centre-right parties have enjoyed nowhere near the scholarly attention of their centre-left (and now their Green and far-right) counterparts.

This lacuna is problematic in intellectual and practical terms. Centre-right parties will, after all, play a large part in determining the success of the European response to challenges posed to the continent by (among other issues) global insecurity, ageing and European integration. In particular, these parties are crucial to the setting (and the translation into policy) of an alternative (ie non-social democratic) agenda on key areas like economic liberalisation and on migration. With the expansion of the EU, the centre-right parties of East Central Europe will face the same challenges in an increasingly shared context, and they may well play a similar role and take a similar stance. Yet nearly a decade and a half after the fall of the Wall, and despite the imminent expansion of the EU, there is still very little of the kind of genuinely pan-European political research that would allow us to compare, contrast and predict.

This is not just a problem for academia, but also for policy-makers. The failure to fully appreciate the constraints on international negotiators imposed by domestic (inter-party and electoral) political considerations can prove very costly. It is also a problem for the parties themselves: while many of them are members of 'internationals' (such as the European People's Party) the limited extent of their learning from each other (particularly in terms of policy transfer but also in terms of strategy) is striking - especially when compared with their counterparts on the centre-left.

Past seminars include the following:

Seminar 1: (30 September 2004, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London): The new right in the new Europe?
The nature and direction of the CEE Centre Right. An introduction to Western-focused comparativists to the ideology, organisation and performance of the centre-right in the region. A chance for those working on the latter to get feedback from those who normally work on the west.

Seminar 2: (21 January 2005, Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex): What is (and is not) centre-right?
The nature, limits and coherence of centre-right ideologies and policies. Distinctions between conservatism and Christian Democracy, and between the West European, Southern European, and post-communist centre-right - and the relationship of both to (neo) liberalism and the far right.

Seminar 3: (14 & 15 July 2005, Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex): Motors of, or mixed feelings on, European integration and Atlanticism?
Variation in attitudes toward the EU and the US. The extent to which the Euroscepticism of CEE conservative parties still separates them from their (hitherto and not uniformly) more Europhile counterparts in the West. Where centre-right parties stand on Rumsfeld's division between 'Old' and 'New' Europe.

Seminar 4: (December 2005, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge): The post-cold war politics of identity and insecurity.
How is Europe's centre-right dealing with the domestic and international effects of ageing and globalisation - the work and welfare squeeze, migration and terrorism? The extent to which there is a distinctly conservative or Christian Democratic approach to such problems.

Seminar 5: (Spring 2006, Leiden University, NL): Hollow cartels or embedded institutions?
Are centre-right parties linked into civil society? Connections between the parties and interest groups, NGOs and think-tanks. The extent to which centre-right parties are more prone than even their centre-left counterparts toward the electoral-professional route.

Seminar 6: (12 May 2006, Dept. Politieke Wetenschappen, University of Antwerp, Belgium): The Challenge of the Extreme Right
The radical, far and/or populist right seems here to stay. It presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the European centre-right. Should it compete, should it co-opt, or should it ignore and isolate it?